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Hi I've run a few sites and had some success with monetizing them through affiliate marketing.
I have a decent understanding of affiliate marketing and really enjoy the process.

I am looking to provide affiliate marketing and other monetization to local bloggers and content creators in a specific niche.
My idea at the moment is to take care of the monetization process letting the client focus on producing valuable, engaging content. Bloggers in my niche are not typically particularly business minded or tech savvy.
I would take a cut of the revenue I create for them.

As far as I'm aware, this situation wouldn't be classed as sub-affiliation because I'm not just providing an open door for people to sub-affiliate. Instead I'd be managing the monetization process for a relatively small number of publishers. I'd be taking care of the process myself and thus complying with all user agreements/rules.
I haven't really found any info about this kind of a role, perhaps I'm searching for the wrong terms.

How would this arrangement typically be handled? I'm thinking in terms of accounts on affiliate networks etc. I want to be really transparent with the networks and comply fully with their user agreement/rules.

Hi Pauljn, and welcome to ABW. Normally the first post is an introductory post, so we could get to know you better, so hopefully you'll share that info with us shortly.

Companies that are already offering a similar service are Viglink, Skimlinks and Prosperent. You may want to review how they operate to see what you can glean from them. I'm glad to see that you want to be transparent, as the network merchants would definitely want to see each blog before approving them as a member of a program.

If YOU get paid by the networks then more than likely you will be considered a 'sub-affiliate' network. There are merchants that do not allow 'sub-affiliates', merchants who do not approve sites they can not vet, and even networks that do not work with 'sub-affiliate' networks.

That being said:

You could easily create a separate account on each network for each of your clients with multiple logins. Payment would go to your clients and you would need to be able to review their account stats and invoice them accordingly to get paid. However, tech savvy or not, at some point your clients will say 'Hmmm, I don't need this middleman'.

Networks like LinkShare allow you to have one account with separate marketing channels where each channel is a unique website. Payment recipient is the main account holder but each marketing channel has to meet network minimum thresholds. Multiple users are allowed and each additional user (your clients) can have levels assigned (ie: reporting only) and can be associated with a specific channel.

However, the risk you run by doing any of this is one bad apple can cause you a whole lot of issues. Should a visitor to a client's site start using a pocket full of stolen credit cards to place orders - you're on the hook...

You could easily create a separate account on each network for each of your clients with multiple logins. Payment would go to your clients and you would need to be able to review their account stats and invoice them accordingly to get paid. However, tech savvy or not, at some point your clients will say 'Hmmm, I don't need this middleman'.

Yup this is a very good point. I'm hoping to offer enough value in other areas that the chances of happening are reduced, but clearly I need to factor a % of people doing this and work out how to deal with it. I have to find a balance between legitimate obfuscation in order to protect my knowledge and transparency/adding value to the client. My guess is that it should lean towards the latter.

Originally Posted by Convergence

However, the risk you run by doing any of this is one bad apple can cause you a whole lot of issues. Should a visitor to a client's site start using a pocket full of stolen credit cards to place orders - you're on the hook...

I'm quite surprised by this, I hadn't thought about this before. In terms of repercussions, I assume worst case scenario is that you're thrown off the affiliate network (which is obviously pretty bad). Fraudulent payments have to be a problem for any affiliate and presumably a relatively stable % of payments online are fraudulent. Would the problems start to arise if multiple fraudulent payments were put through an affiliate? (signifying that they're referring lower quality traffic than the average or even complicit and thus undesirable for the merchant/networks) or could one single bad incident start to cause big problems for an affiliates relationship with the network. Probably slightly vague and varies network to network but in your experiences what's likely?

Easy to get on a network's radar. From what has been posted on this forum over the years, it seems most networks have no problem terminating affiliates based on suspicious activities. Plenty of "I've been terminated with no notice" type threads...